Castlevania: Curse of Darkness

I bought this manga due to my love for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I never played Cursed Seal of Darkness as this one is based off, so I can't say how accurate it is with the storyline.

This was certainly an interesting read, especially Volume 2 with the last chapter. It gave some insight on how Hector would survive if he was more accepted. The twists were also fairly well played out and kept me wanting more. It's a shame there has been no continuing 3rd volume though.

The one thing I would've liked to see added into this manga, was the fight between Belmont and Dracula. It was only spoken of and never shown. We only see 1 or 2 scenes with Belmont as well. Unless there is further use for him, or some back story behind the fight between Belmont and Dracula, it was a little disappointing for such little appearance.

Overall, I'd recommend this series if you're into the whole Dracula leading devils and demons thing.

It's important to preface this review that this manga is sorely incomplete. This is the biggest detractor from the narrative.


Story:
The narrative is written in a way that puts an incredible amount of focus not on Dracula, nor the Belmonts. Rather, this story is focusing on the two best sorcerers within Dracula's castle. It's written pretty well, and it's very solid in it's focus on creating believable characters with real problems and conflicts, but the complicating incident that essentially gets the story going is, quite literally, the final page of the manga.

I could talk about how there are great things here and there within the manga but when you realize it ends without resolution with the intention of continuation, it's in bad taste to even go so far as to discuss or recommend this.


Art:
Fairly good artwork. Things feel limited and small since there's seldom any large 2-page panels to set a scene well. I think I can remember one, but it was focused on something far in the distance so it never emphasized the small things within the world.

Characters look really good, monsters look pretty cool, and most of the artwork is really quite great, but it's when they start moving that things become a real mess. I found it really difficult to follow anyone's action motions and I tried not to spend a lot of time trying to discern what was happening. It would have been a waste of time, so I merely skimmed most action pages and stuck to reading the dialogue.

There's some 'incomplete' artwork. By that, I mean there's characters in the distance who don't have their faces fully drawn, rather the artist chose to keep the positioning lines on their faces. It's not all that damning, but it's lazy.


Character:
I enjoyed all of the characters even if the antagonist was a wet blanket. His vengeful character was uninteresting but it was sufficient for what was basically 2 volumes of exposition.

For the rest of the cast, everything was done well and good. I liked everybody. The 'climax' (read: complicating incident) meant a lot to me because I liked these characters so much. It's even worse to think there isn't a continuation considering this fact. If this manga kept going, it would definitely have become one of my favorites, no doubt.


Enjoyment:
Since this manga is an incomplete story, I can't really say that the ending disappointed me, but because it's incomplete it definitely soured my experience. I almost wish I didn't waste my time with it. It's just bad. It's such a poor decision. Why wasn't it complete?

So, in all seriousness, this is a work that can be ignored, but there is something to find fun about it. I enjoyed everything up until the final chapter.


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